


Are You Listening?

by dridri93



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (see endnote for clarification), 10 Percent Sauce 90 Percent Hurt/Comfort, Hardcase Gets a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, slight dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:26:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24873016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dridri93/pseuds/dridri93
Summary: The thing is, Hardcase knows the words weren’t meant cruelly. He knows Wolffe didn’t mean to sound like he was actually disappointed. He even knows that usually that tone and those words just made him work harder to blow Wolffe’s mind.But.It had been a long day.
Relationships: Hardcase/CC-3636 | Wolffe
Comments: 12
Kudos: 127
Collections: Open Source Soft Wars





	Are You Listening?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Anchor Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24159544) by [Quo_Usque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quo_Usque/pseuds/Quo_Usque). 



> I projected more than a little onto Hardcase and this came out. It's 10% Sauce and 90% Feelings, with a little bit of heaviness because Hardcase makes me feel things with how he looks so hesitant when his brothers laugh at him.
> 
> Thank you to GoBayern16, Poptarts, and Kit for the beta read - y'all made this the very best it could be.
> 
> See the endnotes for specific warning as referenced in the tags.

The thing is, Hardcase _knows_ the words weren’t meant cruelly. He knows Wolffe didn’t _mean_ to sound like he was actually disappointed. He even knows that usually that tone and those words just made him work harder to blow Wolffe’s mind.

But.

It had been a long day, see.

Everything on Concord Dawn was settling in now, the last of the houses going up, the vode moving into their new homes planetside. The things to _do_ were drying up. And that left Hardcase at loose ends. Even _he_ knew what he was like when there wasn’t something to shoot at, work on, or otherwise _handle_.

None of the vode were built for idleness, but Hardcase _suffered_ in it.

And that meant things… happened.

He really didn’t _mean_ to set off the fire suppressors in Kix and Jesse’s new stronghold of an apartment. (Honest, he didn’t, the damn welcome-home sparklers had been advertised to him as _flameless_ , karking _Jet_.) But he _did_ do that. And Jesse wouldn’t let it go, which means Fives heard about it and _he_ certainly didn’t let it go. And of course the whole building heard the alarms when the suppressors triggered and heard Kix bellow his name, so they all knew.

So, naturally, by noon meal, every vod in a hundred-kilometer radius had heard about “the Sparkler Incident”.

Hardcase tried to argue that now Jesse _knew_ that his overly aggressive fire suppressor system worked – because there hadn’t _been_ any flame, but apparently the stupid system sensed the heat or something – but Jesse ignored him.

It didn’t hurt.

Really.

And ever since noon meal, it felt like, any vod who saw him in the streets started giggling. _Giggling_. He knew he didn’t have any weird foam on his head, he’d checked. Word spread fast, apparently.

So Hardcase went home, hoping to outrun the rumor mill and find something to _do_ in the space that was now _his_. 

Wolffe was waiting for him, and that… lit fizzy sparks in his stomach, seeing the man sitting on _his_ front step dubiously watching _his_ roommate prune bushes.

He’d expected a lot from finally being able to control his own destiny, but he hadn’t dared to expect that _Wolffe_ would be there.

But there Wolffe was, chiseled jaw and sardonic smile and raised eyebrow and all, and Hardcase’s house _should_ be isolated enough that Wolffe hadn’t heard, and _maybe_ if he was really distracting he could just get his mouth on Wolffe and let himself … drift for a while.

One thing led to another, and Hardcase had gotten his mouth on Wolffe and it was _just_ as wonderful as he’d hoped. With the warm weight of Wolffe on his tongue he could forget about sparklers and side-eyed glances and focus on making Wolffe feel _good_. 

He used every trick in his book: his tongue flicked right under the head, gentle suction interrupted by taking as much as he could into his mouth, pressing his tongue into the underside to make Wolffe _gasp_ – he knew how to make Wolffe dance right on the edge of pleasure and this was something he could _do_. 

And then Wolffe says it. Six words, that he’d said before, that hadn’t _hurt_ like this before.

“I know you can do better, Cas’ika–”

The fizzy sparks in his chest die an ignominious death, much like the sparklers in Kix’s apartment hours ago.

He _is_ doing his best. He _knows_ he’s making Wolffe feel good, he can feel it in the tenseness in Wolffe’s thighs and hear it in the pitch of his groan.

But –

_I know you can do better._

…Can he? _Should_ he be?

Hardcase doesn’t _tear up_ giving a suckjob, he knows his limits too well to tear up like a shiny exploring another vod’s body for the first time and going too deep. But his eyes are prickling, and he tastes pure salt on his next pass down Wolffe’s cock, much more perfunctory than the previous.

He suddenly just wants this to be _done_. He wants to curl up and go to sleep and hope some _jetii_ osik wipes the previous day from Concordia’s collective memory.

There’s a hand on his forehead.

He lets Wolffe push him back and looks up, to the right of Wolffe’s face, trying to keep the prickliness he can feel in the corners of his eyes from leaking.

“Cas’ika?” Wolffe asks, _concern_ in his voice.

Hardcase wants to – he doesn’t know. Snarl? Hide? Sob? He feels unnameable emotion swell like a bitter tide between his teeth but he doesn’t want to kark this up any more so he blinks back.

“Hardcase,” Wolffe begins, and this is _serious_ , his full name – “What happened?”

“’M fine,” he mumbles, glancing down to see if he has a chance to finish this, to make at least _Wolffe_ feel good and sleep easy tonight – 

And Wolffe taps a gentle finger on the curve of his skull and says, “No, we’re done. Come up here, Cas’ika.”

And.

Well, it hurts. “But–” he tries to protest, but Wolffe’s hand doesn’t relent and he can’t help but follow where it leads.

“The only tears I want near my deece are tears of joy, cyar’ika,” Wolffe says, and the gruffness smooths down his spine because this is _Wolffe_. 

Even if he’s not _crying_. “I’m not–” Hardcase tries to argue, but Wolffe cuts him off with a pointed flick under his right eye to show a glisten of water where there had been none. And, well, evidence was hard to argue against. “I’m _fine_ ,” he tries to redirect, because like hell are they talking about his _feelings_ right after Wolffe felt the need to pull him off his deece.

“You’re not.” Wolffe tries to soften his tone and mostly just sounds hesitant. Hardcase feels his spine stiffen. He is _not_ going to let himself be treated like he was fragile because he _isn’t_.

He staunchly ignores how his cheeks feel oddly cool.

If Wolffe hadn’t called a halt, he’d offer to go back to his knees, to make things _right_. But calling halt meant _halt_. So instead he tries to shake off Wolffe’s regard and roll over. Might as well try (and fail) to sleep. He didn’t want to have this conversation.

But Wolffe _did_ want to have this conversation, apparently, because a hand stops him from rolling. Not a grip hard enough to hold, but enough to stop him. Enough to say _Hold._

So Hardcase holds.

He could do nothing else, not when Wolffe is the one asking.

Wolffe sounds a lot less hesitant this time when he asks, “ _Talk_ to me, Cas’ika.” 

“I don’t–” he tries to say, tries to dodge the question, because he doesn’t _know_ what happened. Not really. All he knows is that he was fine, _great_ even, finally free of the _osik_ the day had been, and then _those words_. 

He supposes he’s not fine anymore, not when bitterness rolls under his tongue.

It almost seems like Wolffe hears some of his thoughts, because he just asks, “What happened?” and lets Hardcase sit and try to marshal himself into some form of order.

The bitterness builds, and builds, and Wolffe waits so patiently. It’s the patience that finally breaks the dam holding the bitterness in, the fact that Wolffe would probably have _let_ him sit there in silence until the sun rose because Hardcase needed the time. Because Wolffe was willing to _listen_.

Just like that, the whole sorry affair spills out in bits and chunks. He manages not to tear up any more, but he figures that Wolffe catches the way his voice breaks when he mentions Jesse not _listening_ , and the _giggling_ , and just wanting to _forget_ for a little while and be _good_.

Hardcase doesn’t think he imagines the regret in Wolffe’s eyes when he brings up the _words_ , and how useless he felt just then. “It’s – it’s good normally!” he tries to reassure, because it _is_ , “But this time it was … they felt like … just another thing I couldn’t _do_.” He ducks his head, because admitting that feels like pulling a stubborn baby tooth had, the root catching and tugging.

Wolffe is silent for a long moment, eyes far away, and Hardcase tries not to fidget. (He really does.) But as the silence _stretches_ , the crawling need to let Wolffe process alone and go and … be elsewhere, curl into a corner, find a dark hole outside and let the marshstalkers have him – grows.

He gives in to the urge to shift and Wolffe’s focus lands on him like a searchlight. “Hey,” Wolffe says, “I’m here, Cas’ika.”

Hardcase raises an eyebrow because he has done _more_ than enough talking. 

“I’m sorry, cyare, I was thinking,” Wolffe says, sounding almost like Rex in the middle of one of his planning sessions, a million parsecs away but still _here_ at the same time. “Trying to come up with a good way for me to make sure I don’t kriff up like that again.”

And it’s not _Wolffe_ that kriffed up, and Hardcase tries to say that but an _eyebrow_ from Wolffe tells him that the assignation of blame is not being done by committee.

“So in some cases, me saying – that–” he pauses, and Hardcase is irrationally grateful that he doesn’t have to hear those _words_ again tonight “–is good, and makes you want _more_. Yes?”

Hardcase nods, because _usually_ that’s the effect, which is why Wolffe still does it. (He’s more perceptive than most would peg him for, but Hardcase had him pegged as a sly bastard as soon as he saw him. That’s why Hardcase was _drawn_ to him in the first place.)

“But there are times where it is – too negative. Which is what happened earlier.”

Hardcase nods again, not meeting Wolffe’s eyes. 

“You could have called a halt, cyare,” Wolffe says, hand coming up to smooth over the curve of his skull. “I’d never hold it against you, and I’d never make you keep going if you didn’t want it.”

Hardcase tries to find the words for why he _did_ keep going. He has to make Wolffe _understand_ , because he does want to fix this so it doesn’t happen again but also… No one has really asked him to _explain_ this before, if they notice it at all (he thinks uncharitably), and he finds himself without words.

“It’s not that I didn’t _want_ it anymore,” he starts, and glares Wolffe down when he tries to interject with his raised eyebrow. “Let me _finish_ , cyare. It’s not that I didn’t _want_ to make you feel good, but–”

He can’t articulate the last bit. Or rather, he thinks Wolffe won’t want to hear _but how I felt wasn’t important because I wasn’t going to feel good tonight._ Even if it rings true.

Wolffe sighs. “You know that I only enjoy it when you do, Cas’ika.”

He does have a point, they’d discussed this. “…Yeah.”

Wolffe’s hand rubs gently at his scalp, and it feels like _reward_. It shouldn’t make Hardcase tear up again, but. All he wanted was to do something right, tonight. To cover everything _else_ up. And he’d managed to kark even that right up. And even _then_ Wolffe did this, gave him these soft touches.

“Cas’ika,” Wolffe says, “It’s okay. I’m here. Not going anywhere, cyare.”

He lets himself melt into the soft touches. His spine aches from the tension he’d been holding for too long, but the gentle pressure on his temple sends warmth through his body.

“Let’s try this,” Wolffe says thoughtfully. “A halt is still _halt_. But let’s have a check-in sign. Something that doesn’t stop everything but does tell the other that we need a break, for whatever reason.” Wolffe glances over. “Sound fair?”

Hardcase blinks. It does. “What sign?” he asks. 

Wolffe’s gaze goes distant, thinking, and Hardcase racks his brain to try and come up with something. Wolffe clears his throat before he can sift through the obvious answers – too many sound like _halt_ , and that’s the opposite of the point of this sign.

“ _Pare_ ,” Wolffe says. _Wait_.

It’s a good one, Hardcase thinks. Concise, easy to remember, but far enough from _stop_ to keep it distinct. He nods and curls into Wolffe’s side.

He’s _tired_ , all of a sudden.

“’S good,” he mumbles, in case Wolffe needs verbal confirmation. 

Wolffe hums assent and tucks an arm around Hardcase’s shoulder, pulling him in. His warmth surrounds Hardcase, and the stress of the day slips away slowly as his muscles unwind. 

“Good,” he hears Wolffe murmur above him, fondness deep in the purr of his voice. “Now sleep, cyar’ika. I’ll be here in the morning.”

Hardcase knows he will, and he hopes that the morning will be brighter for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for a mood drop in the middle of giving a blowjob, resulting in wanting to "finish it" to make the receiving partner feel good; said partner recognizes the problem quickly and they have a good Adult Conversation and establish new a safeword for the situation.
> 
> \--
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Find me on Tumblr at medic-kix, come talk to me about clones and how they deserve soft things.


End file.
